This Week’s “SNL” Offers a Lesson in Check-Splitting Etiquette

This one goes to an unexpected place

"SNL" check-splitting sketch
Owen Wilson has some pointers on splitting a check.
NBCUniversal

When dining out with friends and family, the process of splitting a check can be more awkward than it seems. For comedy writers, though, the process of splitting a check can be the key to something hilarious. The latest season of I Think You Should Leave featured a memorable sketch based on the concept of “credit card roulette,” and the 2019 SNL sketch “Cheques” also included a bit about check-splitting.

The apex of comedic check-splitting bits may well have come via a sketch cut for time from Saturday’s SNL, however. The premise is relatively simple: a group of people are settling the bill after a dinner, and it becomes clear that one of them (played by Owen Wilson) has ordered an increasingly bizarre array of foods — including a few things that seem more like grocery orders than entrees.

And then things take a turn. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that things take several turns, leaving the sketch in a very different place where it ends than where it began. You might think you’re watching a sketch about an increasingly hapless and toxic man having both qualities slowly revealed to his cohorts; as it turns out, there’s something very different afoot.

Meet your guide

Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…
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